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Frankly, You Won't Give A Damn About `Scarlett'

After A Fair Start, The Series Bogs Down In Its 8-hour Bloat

November 11, 1994|By Ken Parish Perkins, Tribune Television Critic.

"Scarlett"

8 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday, CBS-Ch. 2

For a television industry enamored of sequels, soapish melodramas, sweeping mini-series and women in peril, "Scarlett" (8 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday, CBS-Ch. 2) ought to be a dream come true.

But it's more like a nightmare.

A long, messy, costly nightmare.

"Scarlett" is based on Alexandra Ripley's follow-up to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind." Critics panned the 823-page tome, which advances the tempestuous affair of star-crossed lovers Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. But readers gobbled it up. The book has sold 20 million copies worldwide and was on the New York Times best-seller list for 34 weeks.

Hoping to capitalize on that success, CBS turned Ripley's book into the most expensive mini-series ever made ($45 million), an eight-hour saga ("GWTW" was only 3:43) starring Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as Scarlett and one of the lesser James Bonds, Timothy Dalton, as Rhett.

No one expected "Scarlett" to be comparable to the 1939 film "Gone With The Wind," produced by David O. Selznick and winner of nine Academy Awards. But it might at least have tried to be a little more ambitious than the run-of-the-mill TV movie that it's turned out to be.

"Scarlett" picks up where "GWTW" left off, at the funeral of Melanie Wilkes. The first two hours of the mini-series, during which our heroine concludes that chasing Ashley Wilkes (Stephen Collins) is a lost cause and sets her eyes on Rhett, are quite promising.

If only "Scarlett" had ended there. Instead, it drags viewers through Scarlett's soul-searching with soap-opera-ish subplots that seem forced and petty.

After the war, Scarlett moves from Atlanta to Charleston to Savannah-making a killing in real estate along the way-then to Ireland, where she helps rebel peasants, raises a child and accidentally runs into Rhett, who has married and is about to become a father.

The love-hate relationship between Rhett and Scarlett, though cute in the beginning, starts to wear thin after a half-dozen of these accidental meetings.

Meanwhile, Scarlett is also slapped around by a lover, ridiculed in England for being Irish-American and put on trial formurder.

Despite a dreadful screenplay, Whalley-Kilmer, best known for the 1989 film "Scandal," is quite exceptional as Scarlett. She lends a sophistication to the role of a feisty woman who, through a series of events, learns to care about someone other than herself.

With the right pose, Dalton favors Clark Gable, leaving the viewer to wonder of it's Dalton's limitations as an actor or the lines he must read ("You're trying to pass yourself off as a lady-you couldn't fool a blind deaf-mute," he tells Scarlett) that render his dashing character so dull. Tragedy and heartbreak seem to have robbed Rhett of his charm and wit as well.

At the request of Mitchell's estate, Ripley's "Scarlett" is void of explicit sex scenes and violence. But it's obvious that the creators (John Erman produced and directed from a teleplay by William Hanley) of the telefilm weren't under such restrictions.

Low-cut gowns reveal Scarlett's cleavage and, in one scene, she joins Rhett in a lovemaking session in which both are partially nude. There are also graphic scenes involving birth, two murders and a beating in which Scarlett is raped.

"Scarlett" also stays clear of the kind of racial politics that permeated "Gone With the Wind" by spending much of its time in Ireland (where the English take the role of oppressors) and trying to prove that blacks were, despite a time when anti-black sentiment was at its highest, progressing.

Former slave Big Sam (Paul Winfield), for example, is now a thriving builder. Servant girl Prissy, whose incomprehensible dialect drew the most criticism for negative black portrayals in the original, is gone.

Scarlett's ever faithful house servant, Mammie (Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win an Oscar for the orginal role), is played by Ester Rolle, who spends about 30 seconds on screen in a death scene.

As Scarlett and Rhett hover over her, Mammie whispers her only line: "Always needed carin' so badly, Scarlett did."

Indeed, many cast members are wasted. Sir John Gielgud (Scarlett's grandfather) and Julie Harris (Rhett's mother) have little to do. Ann-Margret pops up as a madam; Jean Smart ("Designing Women") is Rhett's confidant; Colm Meaney is Scarlett's cousin from Ireland.

The best of the supporting cast was Melissa Leo ("Homicide: Life on the Street"), who turns in a terrific performance as Scarlett's embittered sister, Suellen.

CBS is hoping that a heavily watched, four-day spread of "Scarlett" will help carry it to first place in the November sweeps, despite first-day competition from the broadcast premieres of "JFK" on NBC and "Lethal Weapon 3" on ABC.

Remembering that might help explain why this bloated mini-series seems to take forever to end up exactly where you thought it would. And even that's a letdown.